Habermas On Communication In Teaching

Educational Theory

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 191-207

  Heslep, Robert D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65249144954     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2001.00191.x     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Robert E. Young, A Critical Theory of Education: Habermas and Our Children's Future (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999)
2. This book will be cited as CTE in the text for all subsequent references. Rex Gibson, Critical Theory and Education (Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986), 32-41.
3. Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 253-56
4. Jürgen Habermas, "The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies," Philosophy and Social Criticism c 11, no. 2 (1986): 1-18.
5. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press,) and Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979). These two books will be cited in the text as TCA and CES for all subsequent references.1984
6. Habermas's German expression for communicative actionis "kommunikativeHandeln" Both "Handeln" and "Tat" may be translated as "action" but in different senses. "Tat," which derives from the infinitive for "do" or "act," means action in the sense of a deed, a doing, a feat. "Handeln," which has an obvious kinship to "Handeln," or "merchant," means action in the sense of transaction, for instance, bargaining, discourse, dealing, negotiation. Thus, in keeping with Habermas's theory, one may think of a communicative action as a linguistic transaction that aims at an agreement somewhat in the way that the transactions of people in the marketplace might aim at mutual understandings.
7. Nicholas Garnham, "The Media and the Public Sphere," In Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 359-76.
8. Briankle G. Chang, Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and Economies (Minne apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 43
9. Jacques Derrida famously criticized John Searle for making the speech act the model of communication. Habermas, who was an indirect object of this criticism, charged that Derrida misunderstood the model. Jürgen Habennas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, trans. Maeve Cooke (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 383-99
10. Benjamin Lee, "Textuality, Mediation, and Public Discourse," In Habermas and the Public Sphere, 410-11.
11. Nicholas C. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993), 77.
12. I am not totally confident that communicative action is meant here by Habermas to be fundamental to communication. Actually, the sentence of concern is ambiguous on the point for the reason that it ends abruptly with "fundamental," without explicitly saying to what communicative action is basic. Given the context of the sentence, such action could be understood to be the basic type of social action or to be basic to communication or to mutual understanding. The decisive reason why I am assuming that Habermas intends by the sentence that communicative action is fundamental to communication is that "communication" is the possible referent that is closest to "fundamental."
13. Thomas McCarthy Intimates, but does not assert, that Habermas's concept of communicative action is a theory of communication. See "Communication,"The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement, ed. Donald M. Borchert (New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996), 85.
14. Maeve Cooke, "Introduction," In Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, 3.
15. Gibson, Critical Theory and Practice, 40.
16. The most often used German word for "language" is "Sprache," which is kin to "sprechen," meaning "speak." But etymology is not all that Habermas has in mind when claiming that speech is the primary language. He also means that speaking structurally is basic to writing and other possible uses of symbol systems for making statements.
17. John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Lectures 8,9,11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962
18. John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).
19. William P. AlstonI owe most of these examples to, Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 34-35.
20. So, even though we may say that perlocutionary acts in strategic classroom situations are communicative in the sense of the "background" notion of communication, which, it will be remembered, takes communication to be manipulative, we may not say that such acts in such situations are communicative in the sense of Habermas's reconstructed idea of communication.
21. HabermasFor Habermas's position on poetics and the communicative uses of language, On the Pragmatics of Communication, 383-401.
22. Habermas provides an extensive clarification of "communicative rationality" in Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, 307-42.
23. McCarthy, "Translator's Introduction," In Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, x-xi.
24. The position that first principles are not logically justifiable has been argued by Hans Albert, Treatise on Critical Reason (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 14-19
25. His argument, however, has been contested by Apel, who has held that first principles may be self-proving by their self-reflexivity. Karl-Otto Apel, "The Problem of Philosophical Foundations in Light of a Transcendental Pragmatics of Language," in After Philosophy: End or Transformation! ed. Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 250-90|
26. While Habermas Has several criticisms of Apel's "transcendental hermenetics," he plainly finds much of it compatible with his "universal pragmatics." Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, 41-46.
27. Jonathan Kozol, For one, would be surprised, if not offended, to be told that the students who expressed their private concerns to him were not at the time communicating with him. Kozol typically uses the term "conversation" when he refers to his linguistic interactions with these children. See, for instance, Jonathan Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (New York: Crown Publishers, 2000), xi.
28. In setting this goal, we are rejecting the position that "communication" is a family term, serving not to pick out one or more features that are ublqultous and invariable in all cases of communication but to select features that differ from case to case but more or less resemble each other. Chang, Deconstructing Communication, 231, fn. 1.
29. Accordingly, Habermas's term "kommunicative Handeln" is redundant. As already explained, "Handeln" means action in the sense of haggling or negotiating, which logically aims at an agreement, or common understanding. But "kommunicative" also refers to something being in common. A cumbersome but unredundant alternative is, "die Kommunikation ah der Handeln," or "communication as the negotiation of understanding."
30. To be excommunicated is to be expelled from a community, thereby excluded from having linguistic intercourse with members of that community. In the medieval period John of Salisbury expressed concern that the elimination of rhetoric as a subject of education would imperil communication, which he held to be necessary for distinctively human society. In the modern period John Dewey held that communication is a necessary condition for a political democracy. John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1971), 11
31. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1954), 211-19.
32. For "space shared by two rooms" see Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (New York: Little, Brown and Company,: "Room at the hotel had been engaged for Tony by the solicitors. It was therefore a surprise to the reception clerk when Winnie arrived. 'We have reserved in your name double and single communicating rooms, bathroom and sitting room,' he said. 'We did not understand you were bringing your daughter. Will you require a further room?'"1962), 184
33. See, for instance, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, According to the Use of the Episcopal Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 336
34. In German the verb "kommunizieren" means both "communicate" and administer or receive the sacrament of the bread and wine.
35. By the doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and wine of the communion rite are not media by which the earthly communicant becomes one with Jesus Christ. Rather, the bread and wine become, miraculously, the body and blood of Jesus Christ; thus, upon consumption of the bread and wine, the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ become one with the flesh and blood of the earthly communicant.
36. For instance, Israel Scheffler, Reason and Teaching (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973). C.J.B. Macmillan and James W. Garrison, A Logical Theory of Teaching (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988). Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason (New York: Routledge, 1988).
37. The romantic talk between a teacher and a student does not necessarily imply romance, at least in the sense that involves sexual interest. All that such talk logically includes, when it is communicative, is that the teacher's judgments of what is good or correct for the student are guided ultimately by heart-felt feeling rather than reason and that the student is accepting of such feeling as a basis of practical judgments. Romantic talk seems especially appropriate to a version of teaching as caring. That version, of course, would necessarily be a sentimental one.
38. Kozol, Ordinary Resurrections, pp. 133-143.